Knowledge Networks, Content Intelligence and The Zen of SharePoint #SharePointSym

It’s not everyday that I attend a SharePoint conference and become engaged in academic discussions about the value of knowledge sharing and content intelligence. Such was the case when I attended the opening keynote of the KMWorld 2012 of which the SharePoint Symposium was a part.

A Higher SharePoint

Listening to David Weinberger, one of the authors of Cluetrain Manifesto and Co-Director of the Harvard Library Innovation Lab at Harvard University; and Jeremy Bentley, CEO  and founder of Smartlogic speak about how the concept of knowledge is changing and how applying content intelligence to the information collected can improve its value, respectively, you can’t help but understand SharePoint on whole other level.

When you think about it, SharePoint isn’t simply a platform, it’s a knowledge network. The benefits of knowledge networks go way beyond simply sharing information. According to Weinberger, participating in knowledge networks, whether it’s SharePoint or Reddit, makes us better equipped to be better humans. We learn how to appreciate the power of disagreement and difference, while at the same time we embrace humility and display generosity. It takes a lot to ask a question in a public forum, and requires great confidence to supply an answer. Even if we are able to hide behind a clever moniker or avatar, participating in knowledge sharing makes us quite vulnerable.

Is Your SharePoint Portal an Echo Chamber?

As a result, Weinberger cautions, we resort to echo chambers to make us feel safer and secure. We are among our own in forums where we’re most likely to agree with the answers given, whether they be political, personal or professional in nature. Weinberger challenges us to embrace the messiness, the vulnerability and the uncertainty that knowledge sharing brings by learning how to appreciate difference and diversity of the crowd.

When creating our own networks, he urges us to learn how to deal with difference in useful ways, like approaching issues from different perspectives, or asking questions about the things we don’t know and inviting others to ask questions about us.

When you think of SharePoint, the same strategies should apply. Are your users power users, or everyday users? Has your SharePoint portal become an echo chamber for your team, or is a place where diversity thrives? If not, it may be time to take a step back and examine the integrity of your knowledge network.

How Smart is Content Intelligence?

In every knowledge network, there is information. But how is it structured? If you’re still managing your information the same way you did a decade or more ago, Jeremy Bentley suggests that you might want to add some intelligent content layers to it.

For starters, you probably have a lot more information to manage than you did a decade ago. It used to be that you had information overload. Now you have big data. The difference — how you handle it. With content intelligence, you can better identify what is your information. It’s almost impossible not to label it something (even if most of us label it unstructured!).

Once you identify it, you need to extract meaning from it. What's in it? Once you extract, you need to classify it to determine what it's about.

Again, the same process can be applied to how we share and manage information within SharePoint. It sure would make it much easier to use if we knew what information there was, what's in it and what it's about, wouldn't it? The same content intelligence is just as vital when it's self-contained, as when it's being shared. Bentley says that the new world of big data needs a new layer of content intelligence — and I've even argue that it's just as true with each new generation of SharePoint.

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

Does The Customer Hold All The Cards? #socialintel2012

Gone are the days when your product would sink or swim based on brilliant packaging, placement and promotion. Here are the times when you must provide something of distinct value to start with, then tackle the challenge of convincing the world that the value is real. Marketing practices no longer peddle a product that scratches an itch; they present a collaborative approach to meeting people's needs.

Talk About Idealistic …

Consider the impact of word-of-mouth on your company's reputation. Social media has, according to Sally Falkow of Meritus Media, increased the effect of it by tenfold, a statistic which is easy to believe.  The assertion is that doing otherwise would lead to imminent failure, because organizations are powerless against the momentum and reach of social media. The only valid response to this is to be an honest, open, transparent, helpful company with an excellent product. Be as reactive to your customers as you are proactive to potential concerns. Or die?

Does that not seem a little dreamy to any other realists (ok, cynics) out there? Do you still not encounter thriving companies who don't play the game? While many companies can recognize and pontificate on the common issues within their industry, do they not still seem to fall into the same exact traps? I mean, that's what makes them "common issues."

Are You Buying Into It?

We will all agree that the salesperson, as we remember him or her, is extinct. It's an antiquated (if not romanticized) notion of being slick enough to close the deal. "The deal" doesn't exist anymore either —we're selling real value and honest interaction now. We aren't in the business of persuasion. Or so the thought leaders at Social Media Intelligence Conference would like us to believe.

I believe we've been cornered and a bit bamboozled. We're forced to take more direct and immediate action to appease consumers, but we're also appeasing the industry that couriers those consumers to our doorstep. I've experienced enough ambivalent disregard for my appreciation from any given corporation to believe that statistically speaking, they still don't care about me. The odds that I'll be an influencer with enough reach to disrupt their good name in the media are slim. And should I turn out to be a fly in the ointment, they must either recognize the inevitability of that event or believe they can stunt it.

It seems to me that proactive authenticity is more of a pontification than a practice. What do you think? Does the transparency of Twitter and Facebook demand complete honesty from a corporation? Is there a noticeable trend towards equal engagement between you and the brands you buy into? Or is the social landscape just another place to be neglected, patronized and placated?

About the Author

Matt emerged from a crashed meteor some 30 years ago as an unrecognizable species. Thanks to brilliant innovations by Stan Winston, he is able to walk around in a very human-like state.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Survey Asks Businesses About Big Data Analytics and Social Media

Are businesses aware of the value of big data analytics for social media? A new survey aimed to find out.

The primary goal of the survey, entitled Social Software and Big Data Analytics in Business, was to provide insight into using big data analytics with social software in order to improve business processes. The survey was conducted by Teradata, which offers big data analytics solutions, and social intelligence provider Mzinga, in conjunction with the Center for Complexity in Business (CCB) at the University of Maryland.

Top Metrics

Eighty percent of the survey respondents said that they used social technologies for such business needs as marketing, employee collaboration, customer service and sales. However, nearly half of those using social media said the technologies were not being used to their full potential, and only 12 percent said these technologies help in their day-to-day responsibilities.

Three-quarters reported that they do not measure ROI from their social business use. Of those, 31 percent did not know if their vendor provided analytics that could be used to measure ROI, 14 percent have a vendor that does not provide analytics and 44 percent do not work with a vendor.

If they were to use analytics on the kind of big data that social media can generate, the top metrics that respondents would like analyzed are customer feedback and preferences, ROI, and analysis of user, behavorial and content trends.

Other metrics of interest included conversion attribution, sentiment analysis, topic and event detection, identifying influencers and rising stars, risk analysis and threat awareness, and competitive intelligence.

‘Lack of Consistent Support’

William Rand, assistant professor and CCB director, said in a statement that the survey results “indicate that a wide variety of industries are interested” in the use of analytics for providing insight about social technologies, but he noted the lack of knowledge about implementing analytics and the “lack of consistent support” across platforms.

Thirteen percent of respondents said they expected to be investing this year in these kinds of big data solutions related to social media, while 25 percent said within the next two to five years. Fifty-three percent were not sure, and the rest expected to do so in more than five years or said their vendor already provides sufficient support.

The survey was conducted online in March and April, and received responses from over 500 participants from a variety of industries.
 

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com